Sunday, December 18, 2005

Blue Moon Review

(this is a combination of a review and some more specific comments on deck-building experiences with Blue Moon)

I had played a couple games of Blue Moon in 2004 when it first cameout, and was unimpressed. The art was pretty, but the theme didn'treally grab me and the gameplay somehow seemed unremarkable. Iessentially dismissed it.

Fast forward to fall of this year; Every couple of years, I get theurge to play a game like Magic: The Gathering, but I've avoided it forseveral reasons, despite certain appeal. The appealing features ofMagic, to me, include lots of permutations for play, a variety ofstrategic approaches, opportunities for clever tactical play, and inparticular, the ability to do deckbuilding. Deckbuilding games areappealing because they allow substantial strategic exploration beforeactually playing. Most German-style games don't allow for a lot ofpre-game strategic planning. But, Magic has some huge flaws from myperspective: blind purchases, an extremely deep money pit, andgameplay I don't find that engaging. Well, in the process ofexploring the desire for this kind of game, I found a lot of peoplesaying very positive things about Blue Moon. Further, a guy I gamewith regularly had recently gotten into it and had very positivethings to say about it, so I gave it another try.

Blue Moon seemed to satisfy all of the requirements. It had manypermutations (8 pre-built pre-balanced decks that were all reported tobe interesting), a range of strategies, tactics and the ability tobuild decks. Further, it has no blind purchases and the "money pit"aspect is limited. Because of the way the rules are constructed, a(retail-priced) purchase of about $100 gets you every card and theability to build every legally constructable deck. So, for $200 (nosmall sum of money, but still, limited) two players can play withabsolutely no limitations. In contrast, most CCGs, $200 will give youa good start, but will only scratch the surface of the possible amountone could spend. Finally, the comments on the net assured me thegameplay was more compelling than it originally seemed.

So, I gave it another try, and I must say I've been extremelyimpressed. The deckbuilding aspect intrigued me the most, but Iplayed quite a few games with the stock decks first. It's impressiveto me how dramtically different each of these pre-built decks are, andyet how well balanced they are against each other. Each has its ownstyle of play, some more similar, and some rather different. But,what I really wanted to try was the deck building.

Deck building

The Emissaries & Inquisitors deck give a variety of interestingdeck-building options with the Inquisitor cards. So, I designed abunch of decks (see them at my Blue Moon DeckDatabase), and recently had the opportunity to play a couple ofgames with these constructed decks. I remain extremely pleased andentertained. The first game we played was using decks we each thoughtwere reasonably strong. My deck was a Mimix-based deck that had ahuge number of free cards. This meant I could very quickly play agreat many cards. My opponent's deck was a Flit deck aimed atblocking strong cards and using direct dragon attraction cards to adda little offensive power. The game was quite close with my deckhammering hard on the offensive, while the Flit managed to keepblocking most of those attacks. In the end, the Mimix won, thoughonly barely.

The second deck-building match we each played a deck we didn't thinkwe necassarily be particularly strong. I played an Aqua deck builtwith the goal of being able to outlast an opponent in nearly anyfight. Through a combination of high valued cards and a large numberof shield cards (mutants and non-mutants), it would be a rarecircumstance where this deck would truly be forced to retreat andcombined with the Aqua's "Water of Immortality", there's no particularreason to avoid burning through cards. My opponent's deck was a Khind"one-trick" deck, but it was a powerful trick. The trick was tocollect a hand containing the right set of cards and be able to playthem all at once: both floods (forcing your opponent to retreat,immediately) along with an number of cards which increase the numberof dragons attraced if the opponent retreats. The result was a veryunusual, but interesting game.

The entire game lasted only three fights. The first fight involved ahuge number of cards on both sides. At least 10 cards for each of us,if not more. In the end, the Khind were forced to retreat, butunbeknownst to me he had accumulated most of the cards into his handrequired for his "trick". A few cards into the second fight, myopponent made an error that would rapidly lead to me winning. In theinterest of seeing how it would turn out without that error, Isuggested we back out the move. Having backed out this last play, hemanaged to quickly get the full complement of required cards in hisand and triggered the trick. Two floods meant I was forced to retreatand had to concede four dragons, moving it from two on my side to twoon his. By this point, my opponent was using his Inquisitor RazorMind's ability to discard cards at every opportunity. My deckremained strong, but before I could get to 6 on my side, he was ableto retreat, ceding me a single dragon, and then discard the remaining2 or 3 cards in his hand for the win. Overall, a very interestinggame.

So far, I remain very interested in this game. The deckbuildingaffords a number of opportunities for strategy and analysis outside ofthe context of an individual game. The gameplay itself is more funthan I originally recognized, and experience with the decks certainlyhelps. Further, the basic mechanic (a brinkmanship mechanic, notunlike Taj Mahal) works far better in a two player game than it doesin multi-player game. Overall, a very enjoyable game experience, anddefinitely it is the first I have found that truly successfullyscratches that "game like Magic" itch. Rating: A+

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.